Role Assignments

My topic today might be triggering to some. 

Today I want to talk about emotional abuse in the form of role assignments.  What I mean is when a parent consciously, or subconsciously, picks what their child will become and accepts no other alternative.  We are all familiar with the negative role assignment.  The parent that tells their daughter she is a whore and will never be anything else or the father that tells his son he is worthless and will never amount to anything, but there is also the ‘positive’ role assignment.  A parent that decides their kid is going to be a doctor and won’t except an alternative is just as detrimental.  Everyone in the world is meant to find their place and forcing an unnatural one, even a good one, is destructive as hell.  And I don’t think it could ever be done out of love.  A loving parent would accept their child however they are.  A selfish parent wants something to brag about or wants to complete a dream they never could so they force their kid to be something that they may end up hating.  That hate will eventually translate to their parents and themselves.  It is a worthless parent that tells their kids the ugly things mentioned before.  I salute those that defy these parents.  You are heroes in my eyes. 

I am a victim of role assignment too.  I was taught to be a wife.  Specifically the kind of wife my father wanted to have.  My school life was encouraged and on the surface it might seem that I was told I could be anything I wanted to be, but it was the underlying messages that I can’t get rid of today.  I mentioned before that any time I did something really good the praise included ‘you’re going to make a man very lucky one day’.  I based my life on whether or not a man would want me because of this.  One of the most detrimental parts of this is that my ‘training’ included how I was to perform in bed.  I now know that this is not a parents place and definitely not a right.  Sex is personal and a parent’s talk regarding this should go no further than very basic questions and a plea that they be careful.  If the child wants to have a more open relationship, that is the child’s decision.  Unfortunately I never had this right.  My father and mother would take times to lecture me regarding these things.  My father might talk about the things that my mother did for him and how much better a wife it would make me if I did the same things.  Not only was I instructed how to perform for my future husband, I was also told that I should enjoy it.  This was backed up by the state of one of their friend’s marriages.  Apparently because the woman did not perform enthusiastically as well as regularly the marriage was failing. 

For the last six years this ‘training’ has dogged my every step and now its falling apart.  I know it is not true, but I can not shake what was drilled into me for 17 years.  I did not finally start questioning them until I left for college.  Even throwing myself against everything they ever brainwashed into me has not pried that hook from out of my mind.  I feel worthless because I am not performing to the standards of a good wife even knowing that those ‘standards’ were the concoction of a twisted man.  Even knowing that being a wife and mother is a perk to life, not a requirement.  Six years of fighting with no result has made me resentful to the institution of marriage in general and I must now start all over with a new dilemma.  It would be heart breaking if my heart were capable of breaking.  

So I’ll start over because being here was without a doubt my choice.  It is how I’m here that seems to be the problem.

Is there life before death?

~Graffito, in Belfast